M.O.M.

Friday, April 4, 2014

Jubilee

It was the last day of 6th grade. That means summer break
and then transitioning into Junior High. I was nervous. Having only
moved to the district two years before I was still trying to find my
clique; oh, I know we shouldn’t want to stick with just one group, but
think back to that time in your life… if you didn’t find a group, you
were the lone sheep sitting in an open field, a target for the meanest
predator. Good or bad, I just wanted to fit in.
So on the last day, with my t-shirt in hand, I changed from the cute
outfit my mom approved and donned the shirt for all to sign. Most of it
was your typical yearbook nonsense; stay sweet, stay cool, see you next
year. Nothing original, but I didn’t care, I fit in and that’s what I
wanted.
But then one of the guys, also new and wanting to fit in, wrote four
bold letters across my back. As a way of explaining what they meant he
wrote vertically under the first letter of each word;From Us Crazy Kids
It’s been nearly 30-years since that happened. I don’t remember all
the details, like whether I knew what he was writing, which teacher sent
me to the office, but I do remember calling my mom. It was the first
and last time I ever had to do that. I knew she’d tell my dad, but I
had just enough hope that maybe if I called her instead of him I could
survive this...